Over a year ago, I wrote about the disgraceful actions of the police in framing, intimidating and harassing a Donegal businessman, Frank McBrearty. Read about it here should you feel inclined.

Well, today, Frank McBrearty and his wife, Rosalind, settled their personal action against the State for €3 Million. This is on top of the €2.5 Million they were awarded last week by the courts for the damage the police had deliberately done to their business. And on top of their €1 Million legal costs. That’s €6,500,000 of your money, handed out to compensate for disgraceful behaviour by our police force.

Then there was the case of Frank Shortt, “Perjured into jail” in the words of the the Supreme Court, when awarding him €4.5 Million for what the police did to him. As I said in the earlier post, he was imprisoned, lost his business, his family and his health and was struck off as an accountant because policemen lied to put him in jail.

That makes €11 Million so far, of our money, to cover the costs occasioned by an indisciplined, unprofessional police force.

The reports of the Morris Tribunal make chilling reading. To quote from its chairman:

The Tribunal has been staggered by the amount of indiscipline and insubordination it has found in the Garda force. There is a small, but disproportionately influential, core of mischief-making members who will not obey orders, who will not follow procedures, who will not tell the truth and who have no respect for their officers.

Now let me ask you a question: apart from the dismissal of a few random miscreants within the force, do you think the Garda Siochana will suffer the root-and-branch examination it deserves? Or do you think the culture of untouchability and ignorance will remain as deeply rooted as it has been since the force went corrupt back in the Seventies when they recruited a cadre of uinprincipled and crooked thugs to beat up IRA suspects?

These thugs saw membership of the force as a chance to enrich themselves, and fouled the entire culture of the organisation with a contagion that remains to this day and is passed on to every new recruit through the semi-monastic training establishment they call the Garda College, where young men learn to be “members” of the Garda cabal, and where all other citizens — you and me, in other words — are seen as potential criminals.

And let me ask you another question: do you think for a second that these are isolated incidents or that this sort of thing could never happen again?